The health benefits of a vegan diet in adults are highly controversial. In kids, a vegan diet could be catastrophic.



A new research study from Finland shows that a vegan diet creates numerous deficiencies in babies and toddlers.



While I'm not surprised by the findings, I hope that the plant-based diet folks wake up to the long-term risks of such a diet in young and developing human beings.





The Ethics of Vegan Diet Studies on Children



With most nutrition-related research, you take at least two groups of people and put them on different diets, comparing one against another. Sometimes, a control group that does nothing is also included.



In some studies, researchers test nutrition protocols on healthy adults to see if their health improves or gets worse. For example, researchers compared a high-protein diet to an iso-caloric Standard American Diet and found the high-protein diet led to much healthier outcomes.



In other studies, researchers test nutrition protocols to see if they improve health in unhealthy people.



While it's common to put grown adults on varying nutrition protocols, such research is considered unethical in children. The risk to their long-term health is too significant.



Research Study Design



Instead of creating a study where researchers assign people to specific diets, they found people in the Finnish population already following those diets.



The three groups in the study included:




Babies born from women who ate vegan diets throughout their pregnancies, who breastfed for 15-30 months while eating vegan, and then fed their children a vegan diet for at least a year after breastfeeding. 



Same as above while eating a vegetarian diet. 



Same as above while eating an omnivorous diet. 




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Compared to omnivorous children:


Children on the vegan diets had lower vitamin D status even though vitamin D intakes were the same between groupsChildren on the vegan diets had lower protein and essential amino acid intakeChildren on vegan diets consumed almost no EPA, DHA, or cholesterol





On a positive note, the vegan children did have higher folate intakes. 



Why are these nutrient deficiencies so alarming?



Each of the nutrients mentioned above plays a significant role in human growth and development. I highlighted some of the effects of deficiencies below and link to longer-form articles on the nutrients where available.



Note: The quoted sections below come directly from the research study's paper: Vegan diet in young children remodels metabolism and challenges the statuses of essential nutrients.



Vitamin D




Vegan children in our sample had lower status of vitamin D than omnivores despite all vegan families reporting daily use of supplements that reached the daily vitamin D intake recommendations, and the blood samples having been collected during the high peak of seasonal variation in vitamin D status.




Even though the vegan children consumed equivalent amounts of vitamin D as the omnivorous children, their blood levels were lower.



Cholesterol is necessary for vitamin D production, so it's no surprise that their no-cholesterol diets led to lower vitamin D.



The following are health problems associated with low vitamin D levels.




Increased susceptibility to viral infection including the flu and coronaviruses



Increased risk of insulin resistance and diabetes 



Heart disease



Low bone density, fractures, and osteoporosis